Vicky

Vicky is Burt Robeson’s companion on the journey through Nebraska and into Gatlin, where she is seized by the town’s children and sacrificed under their corn religion. Her fate marks the story’s decisive turn from investigation to personal loss: the religious objects and teachings Burt and Vicky encounter become the framework for the violence that overtakes them.

Identity and Arrival

Vicky travels with Burt in his T-Bird. Although the car is air-conditioned, she fans herself with her scarf and asks where they are; Burt answers Nebraska, and she pointedly clarifies that she wants to know their location within the state. Her question captures the practical uncertainty of their journey as they approach Gatlin.

The danger first announces itself through the radio. A preacher’s emphatic broadcast about atonement and salvation by the blood of the Lamb reaches them as they near a red radio tower protruding above the corn. The sermon links the town’s religious language to a visible landmark, but Vicky’s role in the discovery remains that of Burt’s fellow traveler, not its investigator: Burt turns down the radio and identifies the tower.

Encounter with Gatlin’s Religion

Vicky handles a corn-made crucifix while she and Burt discuss child evangelists. The object is fashioned from dried corn husks and cornsilk, with a small cob bearing a figure formed from the kernels left in place. Its careful construction makes the religious imagery materially specific, joining Christian symbolism to the corn that defines the town’s belief system. Burt calls it fine workmanship; for Vicky, it is an artifact encountered in the course of their conversation, not an explanation of what awaits them.

At the church, the sermon board announces a message about the power and grace of He Who Walks Behind the Rows and bears the date July 24, 1976. Vicky refuses to go inside with Burt. That separation leaves him to investigate alone, while she remains with the car. Burt finds a book whose cover declares that the wicked must be cut down so the ground can become fertile. The language points toward a local doctrine in which religious authority, corn fertility, and violence are bound together; Vicky is not present for this discovery.

Attack and Sacrifice

When the children converge on the church and car, Vicky is behind the wheel of the T-Bird, sounding its horn continuously. Burt runs out to find her upright in the driver’s seat, both hands on the horn ring, as children approach carrying ordinary tools and weapons. The horn brings the danger into the open and alerts Burt to the attack, but the children’s numbers and approach place Vicky directly in its path.

Burt later finds Vicky in a clearing in the corn. The children have killed her and arranged her body as a religious trophy, using corn husks and cornsilk as part of the display. Beside her stand the remains of a former minister and a police chief, evidence that the town’s sacrificial violence reaches beyond Vicky and has a history. Her death transforms the objects and doctrines encountered earlier into elements of a lethal local practice.

Consequences and Significance

After the sacrifice, Isaac announces that the Age of Favor will be lowered from nineteen plantings and harvestings to eighteen. The change makes the community’s rule more demanding for those who have reached the newly lowered age threshold. Vicky’s fate is thus followed by a public restatement of the system that governs Gatlin, even as Isaac presents the sacrifice as his own completion of an offering.

In the weeks afterward, the girls make many corn-cob crucifixes to ward off further evil. The repeated making of these objects follows Vicky’s encounter with the earlier corn crucifix, but now the practice is described as a response to fear within the community. Vicky does not survive to see this aftermath; her death remains the human cost against which the town’s continuing ritual and its attempts at protection are measured.